Greek Parliament To Vote on Constitutional Revisions This Week

Greek M.P.’s will be voting on a series of Constitutional revisions later this week, according to the schedule released by Parliament on Monday.

The two-day debate in Parliament on constitutional revisions began on Tuesday, at 10:00 AM local time (08:00 GMT).

The government of Alexis Tsipras is expected to be criticized by opposition parties. Most of the government’s proposals for constitutional revisions have been nixed by the New Democracy, Movement for Change, Communist and the Union of Centrists parties.

State-run AMNA news agency reports that during the discussions in the review committee of the Parliament, the two largest parties found common ground on just six issues. SYRIZA voted for two proposals of the main opposition and New Democracy gave a positive vote to four in the course of the eighteen meetings.

According to the Greek constitution, an amendment needs to garner at least 151 votes during the current Parliamentary session and at least 180 votes during the next Parliamentary session. This second session must be held after the general election which will be held later in the year.

If an amendment receives 180 or more votes now, it will then need only 151 votes to be enacted during the next Parliamentary session.

Nothing is sure, however, about Thursday’s vote. The Government doesn’t have an absolute majority in the House, since SYRIZA’s has only 145 MPs at the present time. The government is currently supported by only six additional parliamentarians who don’t belong to SYRIZA, and their positive stance for the government’s proposals cannot be guaranteed.